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Fruit size decline from the margin to the center of capitula is the result of resource competition and architectural constraints

  • Population ecology - Original Paper
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Abstract

Plants produce repeated structures, such as leaves, flowers, and fruits, which differ in size and shape. One example of this is fruit size, which is commonly observed to decrease from proximal to distal positions within an inflorescence. The resource limitation hypothesis proposes that because proximal fruits usually develop first, they have temporal priority on access to resources over distal fruits. The non-mutually exclusive architectural effects hypothesis suggests that these position effects in fruit size may also be due to inherent architectural variation along infructescence axes. We separated out the effects of resource competition and inflorescence architecture by removing the outer or the inner flowers within capitula of Tragopogon porrifolius. We also studied if fruit position influenced germination and seedling performance in order to assess fitness consequences of position effects. Inner fruits were significantly heavier when outer flowers were removed. However, outer fruits did not significantly increase when inner flowers were removed, suggesting later fruits were limited by the development of early fruits. Our findings also suggest that architectural constraints restricted the size of inner fruits in comparison with outer ones. We found that both resource competition and inflorescence architecture affected the fruit size of T. porrifolius, even though this species does not have linear, indeterminate inflorescences. We advance the hypothesis that, when such effects on fitness occur, resource competition-mediated position effects could turn, in evolutionary time, into architectural position effects.

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Acknowledgments

Adrián Escudero helped us in designing the experiment, Sonja Rabasa and Raúl García Camacho helped in the statistical analyses, Lucía DeSoto helped in the laboratory and experimental garden, José Margalet, Cristina Fernández Aragón, and Raúl García Camacho helped in the experimental garden, and Bárbara Paredes helped with the laboratory work. David Eldrigde kindly reviewed the English. We thank Christina Caruso and an anonymous reviewer for constructive critics to the manuscript. All experiments performed in this study complied with the current Spanish laws. RT was funded by a FPU grant from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.

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  1. Rubén Torices

    Present address: Área de Botánica, Departamento de Ciencias Agroforestales, Universidad de Valladolid, Campus de los Pajaritos s/n, 42004, Soria, Spain

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  1. Área de Biodiversidad y Conservación, Departamento de Biología y Geología, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, C/Tulipán, s/n, 28933, Móstoles, Madrid, Spain

    Rubén Torices & Marcos Méndez

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  1. Rubén Torices
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  2. Marcos Méndez
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Correspondence to Rubén Torices.

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Communicated by Christina Caruso.

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Torices, R., Méndez, M. Fruit size decline from the margin to the center of capitula is the result of resource competition and architectural constraints. Oecologia 164, 949–958 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-010-1715-0

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